Chapter Twenty-One
The first half of the ride home had been spent with the blasted argument tumbling over and over in her head as she rewrote it in her mind, searching for ways she might have responded to his accusations with fact rather than feeling. She prided herself on being faultless, and she’d been anything but.
The more his words circled, the more inertia they gathered, and the more they sounded like truth. She wanted to claw them from her brain.
The decision not to try is your own. If cowardice makes you average, it is on your head, not mine.
He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. He’d never had to work for everything like she’d had to. He could be mediocre and society would still worship him. For her, mediocrity might as well be death. The fear that she might once again become invisible, or be thought of only in concert with failure, would not let go of her.
What terrible twist of fate had led him to the restaurant? What terrible twist of fate had leftherthere, alone, exposed?
The last half of the ride home had been spent drafting and redrafting a letter to the Captain, so that by the time she slammed the door shut and sank into the sofa without botheringto change out of her dress so that Baskerville’s claws didn’t catch on it, the words were already written; she simply needed to put them on paper.
Dear Captain,
I don’t know what happened tonight. I waited for you at the spot where we said we’d meet. I wore yellow like I said I would, and I sat with a book and a flower, just as promised. But you never arrived.
At first, I thought it was because you were caught in traffic, but as the hour wore on, I realized you simply weren’t coming.
Instead, I was met by an awful, awful man who is single-handedly destroying my life. The entire time we argued, I wished you were there. With you beside me, I wouldn’t have gotten so angry. I wouldn’t have resorted to insults, which are a lazy, cheap way of winning an argument. If you were with me, I would have felt safe regardless of who sat down at that table.
But I wasn’t safe, and you weren’t there, and I don’t know why.
Was it something in my last letter that made you change your mind? Or did you arrive at the restaurant, see me, and decide to leave? Was I not at all what you expected? How did I fail?
I am not fond of ambiguity. If you have decided that you no longer want to be friends, please let me know and I will stop writing. If there was another reason for your absence, please tell me, so that I can stop trying to workout where I went wrong. Regardless, I will always think of you with great affection.
—Booklover
A tear rolled down her cheek, and she tossed the letter aside so that she wouldn’t smudge the ink. She looked at the clock. There was still time to meet Lady Wharton.
It had been irresponsible to choose her own desire instead of the job she’d been hired for. Not only was she late but she was going to have to admit the truth about why she was there at all. Lady Wharton had demanded a reason for Eleanor’s absence and had then warned her of this very possibility, but Eleanor had assumed she’d known better.
The Captain’s rejection was clearly the karma Müller wrote of. Eleanorwasarrogant and this was her comeuppance. Hearing the dowager duchess say “I told you so” was what she deserved.
She dragged herself away from the writing desk to her closet and shed the yellow silk dress that she would never wear again. Standing there in her petticoats, she searched for joy in the plethora of color and lace, but there was none to be found. She could draw no strength from her pretty dresses because they no longer meant anything. She was not a success. She was not excellent. She could not pull herself up by the bootstraps as normal.
There was no facing Lady Wharton. There was no facing the music and joy and color of a ball. Not tonight. So she gave in to her cowardice, crawled into her bed, and wallowed.
Peter’s head throbbed. The lack of sleep made his eyes bleary, and there was an inexplicable ache in his chest. The letter he’d received from Eleanor that morning had been shoved into the drawer, unread.
He stalked to the sitting room, prepared to shut down whatever nonsense his sisters had planned. They would all know Booklover’s identity by now. It was not possible for Edwina to have kept that information to herself. What a fool he’d been to allow them into that part of his life. Now he’d have to explain that the only version of himself that existed was the one they’d always known.
Their clamor silenced as soon as he entered. All three faced him eagerly. “You were gone for a long time, brother,” Winnie said. “Please tell me that you overcame your shock and met with her?”
He didn’t respond, and his youngest sisters misinterpreted his silence, bouncing childishly. Meg was more prudent. She regarded him with apprehension.
“Well?” Jac asked, leaning forward. “What did she say?”
“Was she surprised?”
“Was she happy, or was she mad?”
“Did she swoon when you told her how you felt? Did you kiss her hand? Did you kiss her lips?”
“Winnie!”
“What?” Winnie glared at Jac. “Are you suggesting that he hasn’t fantasized about smooching her for weeks?”
